GluingJig

An individually mouldable surgical targeting system

Minimally-invasive cochlear implantation surgery requires appropiate surgical tools to drill a single bore hole from outside the skull directly down to the basal turn of the cochea. In this project a new concept for providing a customized surgical tool, also known as “micro-stereotactic frame” had been developed. Main idea is to utilize bone cement to fix the individual pose of the template according to a previosly planned trajectory using individual images (e.g. CT or CBCT). This new surgical targeting system includes an aligment device, referred to as “Jig Maker”, based on a passive hexapod with manually adjustable legs for temporary fixation of the single components (disposables) until the bone cement is cured. In a preliminary study, 18 samples of the surgical template were fabricated and evaluated regarding their positioning accuracy. The mean positioning error at the target point (located in a depth of approx. 70 mm) was 0.30 mm with a standard deviation of 0.25mm.

The developed system allows the patient specific individualization of a drill guide under sterile conditions. It does not require expensive equipment or technical personal. The whole process can be performed by OR staff in few minutes. These are advantages compared to previously developed systems and might facilitate its integration into clinical routine.

Contact:

If your are interested in this technology, want to join a collaboration for further development, or just have additional questions please do not hesitate to contact:

Dr.-Ing. Thomas Rau
rau.thomas@mh-hannover.de
+49(0)511/532-3025

Funding:

This work was supported by the start-up grant for young researches ‘HiLF‘ of Hannover Medical School.

Uhlenbusch L. (2017): Investigation of accuracy and error sources of a surgical template made of bone cement. Unpublished Bachelor Thesis. Department of Otolaryngology at MHH and Institute of Mechatronic Systems at LUH.